What sort of visual damage effects can we expect on personal armor? Will we see bullet impacts, burns, cracks in visors, et cetera?
TL;DRCracks in visors should be expected and burn marks are likely, but bullet-hole decals on moving, intricate armor are technically hard, so burn marks that look good on any gear may be used.
Cracks in visors is something that you should expect. And burn marks... In this game, the suits you wear, the loadouts, they are so intricate. So making a bullet hole the normal way might look really odd, because imagine if you have a set of tubes or something; to smack a decal on there would look really bad, because it just wouldn't look real. And the same if you have an ammo magazine and you get a laser burn mark that's circular, and how that would look on your magazine pocket and your skin, and it wouldn't work. So it might be that we go with burn marks instead that look good regardless of what you're wearing.
But that's also one of those things that probably sounds simple, but making decals on a character, that's a whole different...
Yeah, they have to be skinned.
Exactly. Technology, that's a different thing, because the mesh is moving. The objects on your armor are moving. Normally, I guess, when you're creating a decal, you're just placing a decal on the ground and it stays there because the ground is not moving, and that's fine. But for a character, there are things that you need to consider, and all that's just more complicated.
It's absolutely something that we want to do. That's for sure.